This tweet today from Boris Johnson’s supremely talented brother Jo is, to my way of thinking, a perfect illustration of where we as a country are today:
We can all agree that Brexit has divided our country, virtually in two. There have been virtually no efforts to unite the country or, in particular, to devise a Brexit that all sides can live with. I wish there was. Although we know that any form of Brexit will damage Britain and Britons, somehow we have to find a way forward.
I have not lost actual friends through Brexit and there have been no family fall-outs. However, with acquaintances and Facebook ‘friends’, which is not the same as real friends, there has been a fair bit of collateral damage. Some of the falling-outs have been unpleasant and abusive, not on my part I hasten to add, although I have been known to employ a level of sarcasm form time to time. On Facebook, I have unfriended some people, especially those who repeat lies about Brexit and those who resort to insults and bad language. By the same token, a considerable number have done this to me (I know this to be true because some people have actually told me). But imagine having the polar opposite view with your own brother who happened to be the prime minister?
20 Tory MPs have been expelled from the party by Boris Johnson for voting to block a no deal Brexit. Jo Johnson is known to hold broadly similar views on the EU with those 20 MPs. You can work out the rest. Would Boris Johnson have to expel his own brother from the Conservative Party if he too defied his instructions? The answer is obvious. That must represent the “unresolvable tension” to which Jo Johnson refers.
At a time where politicians are less respected and trusted than ever before, we now have a clever, talented MP abandoning his career in order to keep his family together and for what he believes to be the national interest. I think Jo Johnson is incredibly brave and it is sad his political career has ended in such a way.
Even at this late stage, I wish there was a way forward that could end this national strife. A crash out no deal Brexit would pour petrol on the flames, Theresa May’s woeful deal would trash the country in the medium and long term and despite the crooked ‘leave’ campaign, I still have an issue, although not as big an issue as I had before, with a second referendum as being the cure-all. Norway + I could live with, with a view to campaigning to rejoin the EU in the medium term, perhaps? Perhaps not.
Jo Johnson knows better than most that a crash out hard Brexit will merely kick the can down the road. Everything that has consumed the national debate via an obsessed media, will continue to do so for years to come. We will still have to negotiate with the EU on the divorce bill, the Irish backstop; on every single aspect of Brexit. He knew all this and how it would impact on both his family and the country. And it was “unresolvable”.
And it’s unresolvable for the rest of us, too. We are Lions led by Donkeys, a pathetic blustering PM and a relic from Labour’s flirtation with the hard left back in the 1980s who has never had an original idea in his life. That seems “unresolvable”, too.
Here’s a man at the top of the tree who has seen his career taken away by Brexit. What price for the rest of us further down?
